Mercado Mayorista, Ambato

Please join me on Sunday morning at the Mercado Mayorista de Ambato. This is not your typical Northern California hipster farmer's market. This is the real deal, where the farmers meet the vendors at dawn, and regular people like you and me get a little peek in on the action.  We have to rise quite early -- before dawn -- so we can haggle directly with the smallholders and get the best deals. Be sure to wear walking shoes and a warm jacket. A winter hat or beanie is a smart idea too. Bring cash and a good-sized sack to store your plunder.

It is going to be fun!

Ambato is a medium-sized city of about 300,000, located in the central Andean valley of Ecuador. It is often referred to as the "City of Flower and Fruits" and because of its central location is an important goods and transportation hub. The Mercado Mayorista. Ambato's weekly wholesale market, which happens every Sunday morning, is huge, covering an area of eight city blocks by three city blocks, about 240,000 square meters. This is why good walking shoes are a must. I was lucky to get to go this weekend with my dear friend, Lucia, during a weekend visit we made to her daughter and family in Ambato.

Somewhere around 3:00am, trucks start rolling in to the bodegas, mostly small pick ups and medium sized box trucks, driven by the farmers themselves and jammed with freshly picked produce: thousands of heads of broccoli and cauliflower, buckets and buckets of strawberries and blackberries, 100-pound sacks of onions, garlic, and potatoes, wooden crates of tomatoes and oranges, huge bundles of cilantro, green onions, and amaranth, heavy bunches of bananas and plantains. 

These farmers come from all over the country, almost all with families in tow -- from coastal regions with tropical fruits: pineapples, naranjillas, passion fruits, guanabanas, oranges and lemons; from the high Andean páramo with harvests of potatoes, fava beans, beets, chochos, and corn. They, too, are wrapped in ponchos and winter coats, babies swaddled tightly on backs, children cloaked in heavy blankets alternately playing with smartphones and buckets.

Be mindful as you march through the market in a hunt for the best priced broccoli -- we bought 6 for $1 from the back of an idling pick-up -- it is crowded here. People have places to go and quick business to make. Step aside, an elderly woman with a huge bushel of cilantro on her shoulder is plowing through like a bull on mission. Right behind her comes a man with four wooden crates of tomatoes held with a cloth shawl across his back. Oops, move left, here comes a woman with a baby on her front and a bulky sack of carrots on her back.

As we move from our broccoli purchase to a hunt for the perfect zucchini (they definitely overgrow them in Ecuador), we slip past a beautiful indigenous woman from Zumbahua --  black felt hat, colorful belt, black pumps --  pulling the baby on her back into position to breastfeed while she is also negotiating a price on strawberries. Another woman, this one wearing the classic Salasacan white felt hat and short skirt skims by shouting her offer, "Cooking oil, cooking oil for $2/bottle!"  In between yells in Spanish, she speaks in Quichua to the small child who tags behind her. Two women in the corner are kvetching about their children's successes in university, while lugging sacks that are bigger than they are full of dirt-laden yuca from a nearby idling box truck. 

If you are hungry there is plenty of warm food. Here comes a cart filled with freshly cooked quail's eggs; the woman will peel them all for you. And she has salt, of course. Over in that corner, a man is ladling up chicken soup into grey plastic containers. It smells good. Soup is the perfect breakfast on this chilly morning. If neither of those appeal, I heard a woman on the upper deck yelling "Papas y mote con cuero!!" (potatoes and cracked corn with pig skin). Another warm and filling Ecuadorian breakfast meal. Of you could try a colada, a traditional warm oatmeal drink flavored with naranjilla; I don't particularly like it, but it may high the spot. Sorry, no breakfast burritos or toasted croissants with ham and cheese-- this is just not what Ecuadorians eat for breakfast.

Okay, what is left on your list? Thus far, we bought: six broccoli, five cauliflower, a wooden crate of zucchini, a bushel of carrots, a bucket of tomatoes,  two pounds of garlic, three bunches of basil, three bags of oats, and two baskets of apples. We were going to get a bucket of strawberries, but the price is higher than usual today, unclear why, and the strawberries, they do not look that good. 

Remember, no need to buy oranges, we have plenty on our trees back home. They are too delicious to describe. Same goes for lemons yuca, bananas and plantains. All are readily available, growing all around us in our little piece of tropical paradise. 

Ecuador. This tiny little hard-working nation of farmers and entrepreneurs-- prepping and planting and tending and harvesting and buying and selling -- from before dawn to after dusk. Sometimes the Ecuadorian spirit literally takes my breath away. Sometimes I can only step back and be a humble witness to the beauty of this place and its humans -- the fertile ground, the bounty of its harvest, the resilience and grit of its people. 

Do not despair. If you missed your alarm, you can go again next week; Mercado Mayorista happens every Sunday in downtown Ambato. Rain or shine. And you do not have to skip church to go; it is all over before the church bells chime.